Sorry if I am being blunt or rude but if you’re reading this, you probably agree with me.

Why else would you be hanging out on a page called I don’t want to be stressed?

Maybe because you don’t want to be stressed?

Every one of us have a story…. Most of us have some kind of negative story that includes trauma, loss, violence, abuse or extreme stress. Some unfortunate people have all of those things included in their story.

But guess what?

You’re still here – sometimes against huge odds – to tell the story and to do something about it.

Whatever happened in the past is your story.We can wish the past didn’t happen but that doesn’t undo it.

We can wish that whatever happened to us did not affect who we are today – that won’t help either.

What you are is a survivor.

An amazing survivor with a story of resilience to tell.Because despite everything – you made it this far.

Your mission now is take it further.

You are not your past.You are not your old story.You are no longer that victim or that child that was hurting.

It is time to rewrite your story – to step out of your comfort zone and try new things and new ways of doing things.

Take responsibility for your actions, your emotions and the consequences of your behaviours now.

Let your actions, emotions and behaviours of the past stay in the past.

Do things in small steps – one step at a time.

Be gentle on yourself – those small steps often go backward or stay in one place. This doesn’t mean that you’re failing – just don’t give up.

One day you will look back at this time and marvel that you ever doubted yourself.

People tell you awful and ridiculous things when you are going through a difficult time.
Things like chin up, be strong and my personal favourite – everything is going to be okay.
And you feel like saying, “How the hell do you know that things are going to be okay?” because it feels like it is never going to be okay.
This is what I do know – you don’t have to be okay and you don’t have to be strong. You are absolutely allowed to fall apart and cry and scream and panic.
You do need to be gentle on yourself and realise that as much as nobody can tell the future, what you are going through is not going to last forever – it just can’t.
This is what you are going through now.
You are going to overcome this but it is not going to happen overnight. You have the right to be stressed and anxious.
But don’t let that become your story.
Your story is that you will become resilient and you will have a great tale to tell future generations one day – “long time ago, I went through a really difficult time but I survived and I’m here to share my story with you”
I wish that you didn’t have to have that story to tell but it’s yours – embrace it, learn from it, grow from it and become a better person for having gone through it.
You absolutely have this!

This week started horribly with the death of my granny. Although she was 100 years old, it is still sad to lose a loved one.
Something so beautiful came out of her death though.
Distant cousins who I had lost touch with years ago reached out to me in our shared grief. People had such nice things to say and I realised who actually really cares about me. I spent some quality time making an art work memorial for her and found some peace in doing so.

Then later in the week the world was once again thrown into a state of tragedy when we woke up to the horrible news about the bomb in Manchester.
And once again, there was beauty to be seen everywhere. One awful person causes devastation, thousands of people retaliate with only goodness and kindness. From the taxi drivers who offered free rides to people who opened their homes to strangers.

It’s easy to forget how amazing the world and people around us can be when we face loss, stress and trauma. The kindness of people doesn’t really lessen the devastation and pain but it does give a level of hope. It is a hope that things are not actually all terrible. That there is more good than bad in the world. That we can survive tough times.
Open yourself up to the potential of beauty in every moment. It will make things just a little bit better.

They say that time heals all wounds…
And that is so true.
But what nobody tells you though, is how long it takes for those wounds to heal.
And nobody tells you that you are going to feel like crap (sorry, but no other word describes it as well) for that most of that time.
And more importantly, nobody tells you that it is OK to feel terrible. To be sad, and miserable, and to feel sorry for yourself. That it is OK to be angry and frustrated and irritable.
You are not going to sleep, you are going to feel frightened, you won’t be able to concentrate. You won’t enjoy the things that you used to, or if you do enjoy them, you will feel guilty about it.
You won’t feel like eating, or you will eat too much of the wrong foods.
You will want to drown your sorrows in things that are not good for you.
And maybe you will even have very negative thoughts that will make you *in a whisper* want to harm yourself, you may think of dying, you may fantasize about killing or harming somebody else! And it feels so uncomfortable to say those things out loud because nobody wants to hear those things. They want to hear that you are going to be “fine” (ghastly word that it is).

And all the time, people are telling you things about “time healing all wounds” and “being strong”, and what about “there’s a silver lining on every cloud”? And my personal favourite “there’s a light at the end of every tunnel”. But when you are at the beginning of the tunnel, you have no idea how long it is or where the light is.
And you want to scream at them “Shut up! You don’t understand!”
And do you know what?
They don’t understand. Even if they’ve been through a similar situation to yours, they are not you and they don’t understand.
And because they don’t understand, you don’t have to listen to what they say. To their ideas of how you should cope or how long it should take you to feel better.

But please understand this: you don’t have to be strong. Part of allowing time to heal your wounds is to allow yourself to mourn, to be angry, to be stressed. To just be.
And one morning, you will wake up and feel a little better. And then a few days after that, you will feel even better. And then one day, in the not too distant future, you will not even believe how terrible you once felt.
Because now you are a survivor with a whole new story to tell and a whole new journey to explore!

I think that we were all shocked to see what happened in Boston this week. And while everyone, including me, is quick to count our blessings that we, or nobody that we know, was affected by the bombing (I hope). It certainly puts things in perspective though. Whatever seems to be a crisis in our lives right now is probably never as traumatic as what those people are going through right now in Boston.

I really thought about what the people who were involved went through. Did they think: if only I had run faster or if I had been slower, I would not have been there when it happened. And what about the people at the side of the road? Did they wonder why they had chosen to stand in that particular area? Did they think that they wanted to buy something to drink but would wait 5 minutes and then they were injured because they waited those few minutes.

One of the most difficult things about dealing with trauma is the “what if?” question. You can and will spend hours thinking about what you could have done differently or what would have happened if you had made a different decision. Because you feel that for whatever reason, the decision you made was the wrong one.
The thing is that we don’t actually have any control over these things.
Constantly questioning yourself and your decisions, although very normal and appropriate when you are traumatised, is not going to help you to overcome your trauma.
It happened. And you wish that it didn’t happen but it did. And no amount of questioning or rationalising or over-thinking it is going to rewind the past.

I’m not sure if things happen for a reason. That would be the easy answer. We don’t know why things happen, and specifically why bad things happen but they do happen.
And it takes time, and sometimes a long time, to get over the trauma of your experience. The experience never goes away.
But eventually you quieten down the thoughts and the questions and you realise what an amazing survivor you really are.

You can do it and you will do it!

My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected in any way by the Boston tragedy.

My husband has been in hospital the whole week and of course my life has been frustrating, stressful and basically upside down.

And then I thought about some of the things that I have done to cope and decided to compile a list.

You can apply this to your own situation or for helping you to get through any crisis.

Don’t over or under expect anything from anyone. People who you expect will help you don’t and people who you don’t expect anything from, do a lot for you. It is what it is.

Ask for help! People are willing to give if you are willing to ask. And it makes them happy to be able to help too.

Chocolate works wonders.

Sometimes you are NOT going to have control over the situation. And fighting for that control is only going to frustrate you more.

There will always be at least one person who will make you smile (like my wonderful friend who suggests shoes best suited to go with a nervous breakdown – still looking for the best ones). You need those kind of people in your life. Keep them close.

Exhaustion happens quickly, but if you give yourself a break – like having an early night or a luxurious bubble bath (without feeling guilty about it) you can bounce back quickly.

There will be lots of time in life to get things like homework and household chores done. And now may not be that time. Leave it!

Wake up, get out of bed (even if your body screams don’t) and put one foot in front of the other. And then do it again.

Even if you don’t feel like it, keep busy – it is good for you to be distracted.

Remember that what you are going through is situational. And it will pass. Stop thinking about what could have been or what you should have done, or what if, or what might be. It just is! And it is OK to say that you are not OK (one day you will be).

My neighbour is cutting down a tree that is over 100 years old. And besides the fact that I think that it should be a crime to destroy nature like that, by cutting down that tree, they are affecting the design of my garden, the amount of shade that we have and our privacy.

People have had different reactions to my trauma.

They have varied from people being shocked that I should be traumatised by the loss of a tree to people totally over reacting about it.

Believe me, I have been through some terrible traumas in my life and in the greater scheme of things the loss of a tree is minor compared to some of the other things (like guns, robbers and assault) that I have had to deal with.

So what is a trauma and what is not a trauma?

Truthfully there is no such thing as one trauma being worse than another. It is a matter of perspective – what is terrible for someone could be manageable or even exciting for somebody else.

The one thing that all traumas and losses have in common is that they force change into our lives and sometimes that loss of control or the sense of loss of control is worse than the incident itself.

There is a Yiddish saying (although I think that a lot of other people claim it to be their’s) that goes “Mann traoch, Gott Lauch”– Man plans and God laughs.

I’m not sure if anyone, including God, is laughing at us but the saying rings true because you can have the grandest, most well thought out plans about how your life should be working, and then something comes along and throws those plans right out of the window.

I think that John Lennon said it more accurately when he said that “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” in his song Beautiful Boy.

While we are planning and trying to control our lives, life happens anyway. Whether we are ready for it or not!

Perhaps we would be a lot happier if we responded to any difficulties or challenges with the attitude that we will allow ourselves to mourn our losses. But once we are done mourning and feeling sorry for ourselves, we will bravely take the path that life is forcing us onto.

And we will travel that path with the hope that something wonderful is going to happen somewhere along that journey.

Open up to that something wonderful because as much as you may not believe it right now, you really deserve something wonderful to happen to you!